NBC San Diego reports that:

California drivers may soon come bumper to bumper with the latest product of the digital age: ad-blaring license plates.

State lawmakers are considering a bill allowing the state to begin researching the use of electronic license plates for vehicles.

The device would mimic a standard license plate when the vehicle is moving but would switch to digital messages when it is stopped for more than four seconds in traffic or at a red light.

<sigh> As if drivers don't have enough to do, even when stopped at traffic signals.

Like, say, pay attention to what's going on around them.

After trying all kinds of solutions, including re-installing the Flash player multiple times (and some of the solutions found in the Adobe forums, I fixed IE8's inability to play Flash. more »

I've just installed Opera 10.53, and love some of the new features. However, I use the right-click menu to look up word definitions fairly often — and I prefer Answers.com to the default Merriam-Webster.com. I tried the method I've used in the past, but the switch wasn't made. more »

I recently upgraded a number of blogs from WordPress 2.0.11 version to 2.9.1. It all went smoothly except that the upgrade apparently converted certain characters in posts and comments to weird characters. The gobbledygook kind.

If you have the ability to download your database (here's the harder version of getting a mysqldump, which is much easier if you have phpMyAdmin), I'd suggest downloading only the wp_posts and wp_comments tables. Then copy them. Then edit them. (Too many copies are better than none.) more »

Although we're not doing affiliate stuff, we've been watching with interest the move by a number of states to apply sales tax to affiliate referrals by residents of those states that result in sales.

This is being referred to as the "modern nexus" — and while I haven't read the underlying laws (and I believe this is still being duked out in a New York court), I would assume that the issue is not quite the same as requiring sales tax from a company that does not do business in your state. Looking at it from a hopefully more balanced view, it could be argued that a state resident with a website offering affiliate links (some of which presumably end in sales) for an out-of-state company might be similar to a company whose in-state sales personnel obtain sales lead (which end in sales) … that is, a point of business presence is established in the state. I'm wondering if I should duck after saying that. more »

In The image Microsoft doesn't want you to see: Too tired to stay awake, the Chinese workers earning just 34p an hour, we have an awful image of what workers at KYE Systems factory at Dongguan, China undergo in order to make products for Microsoft, among other companies.

Sure, MS is distanced a bit by not operating what amounts (at best) to a sweatshop itself — but can Microsoft really not know? Is that what we are to believe? After all the other companies who "learned" after the fact that the overseas companies who were producing their goods were staffed by poorly-treated and poorly-paid workers?

If you must cart your jobs overseas to lessen your costs (concurrently making our country poorer), here's a word for you:

OVERSIGHT